After Thursday's misery, I-95 ramp reopens for Friday morning commute

On Thursday Jan. 9, 2013 Florida DOT closed the northbound ramps to I-95 from Atlantic and Philips Highway after a crane drilling a piling weakened the ground near the ramps. Crews worked to stabilize the problem. In the afternoon traffic northbound looking from the Atlantic Blvd. overpass continued to be congested near the worksite as repairs in the curve near the large crane were not expected to be completed until around 9pm Thursday night. (The Florida Times-Union, Bob Mack)

Florida DOT closed the northbound ramps to I-95 from Atlantic and Philips Highway after a crane drilling a piling weakened the ground near the ramps. Crews worked to stabilize the problem. Crews work on the embankment with northbound I-95 above to the left.

On Thursday Jan. 9, 2013 Florida DOT closed the northbound ramps to I-95 from Atlantic and Philips Highway after a crane drilling a piling weakened the ground near the ramps. Crews worked to stabilize the problem. Crews work on the embankment with northbound I-95 above to the left (background) with a large crane used to drive pilings in the foreground.

On Thursday Jan. 9, 2013 Florida DOT closed the northbound ramps to I-95 from Atlantic and Philips Highway after a crane drilling a piling weakened the ground near the ramps. Crews worked to stabilize the problem. Crews work on the embankment with northbound I-95 above to the left (background) with a large crane used to drive pilings in the foreground.

Traffic conditions

UPDATE: The ramp from Atlantic Boulevard and Philips Highway to Interstate 95 was reopened about 5:15 a.m., said state Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Goldman.

Earlier:

A 7-inch collapse of an old slab of Interstate 95 roadway caused major motorist misery Thursday morning as thousands of rush-hour drivers had to detour through San Marco while state crews rushed to replace the sunken highway.

Friday expectations are for a normal day of Jacksonville traffic heading into the weekend.

The collapsed piece of the Philips Highway on-ramp onto I-95 northbound was destined to be replaced anyway as part of a $227 million I-95 Overland Bridge project. But repairing the section that buckled about 3:30 a.m. took longer than anticipated. However at 11:30 p.m., officials said it would be 2-3 more hours before the detour would be lifted.

Contractors were driving corrugated pilings into the hillside next to the on-ramp when the collapse occurred, according to Florida Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Goldman. The Florida Highway Patrol detoured traffic around the Philips Highway and Atlantic Boulevard on-ramps. Thousands of cars were rerouted to slowly creep through San Marco side streets or ended up stuck crawling along a very packed I-95.

By the middle of morning rush hour until almost 10 a.m., the backup on I-95 went as far south as Mandarin.

Doug Skiles ran into it en route to his office on San Marco Boulevard.

“There was heavy traffic going through the square and Hendricks Avenue was backed up,” he said. “I went all the way to Kings Avenue and it was backed up too.”

The packed local traffic affected businesses as well.

“Everybody who was trying to come to my office down San Jose Boulevard couldn’t get here on time because traffic was so backed up,” said Matt Carlucci, whose insurance office is on Hendricks Avenue.

The I-95 Overland Bridge replacement project started almost a year ago to replace a 2.3-mile-long series of overpasses from south of the Fuller Warren Bridge to north of Emerson Street by 2016. Thursday’s pavement buckling was right where the ramp comes up from Philips Highway and close to the Atlantic Boulevard merge onto I-95. The ramp was closed so cars wouldn’t get damaged driving over it.

“It was original pavement going back to the 1960s and 1970s,” Goldman said. “The soil beneath the roadway was unstable and the vibration caused the pavement to crack.”

This stretch of interstate is one of the most heavily traveled in Jacksonville. The state’s daily average traffic counts from 2009 show 120,000 motorists using it south of Hendricks Avenue. It is structurally deficient, hence the replacement project, according to state officials.

Crews from Archer Western Contractors of Tampa quickly tore out the buckled roadway but found erosion under it was greater than anticipated. That caused the repair delay, Goldman said. Crews poured the new concrete about 3 p.m., which needed to dry before the ramp was safe to support traffic.

Visual safety inspections are done on projects like this at a minimum of once a week and there was no inkling that the ground under the old slab would shift and cause the problem, Goldman said. It would have been “difficult to discover” this condition unless radar or drilling was done, and that is not a common safety check, he added.

“These things happen, not very frequently, but they do happen,” Goldman said.

Goldman said no one was injured when the pavement collapsed. He said they won’t know whether the contractor will pay until more study is done, but the estimated cost will be $20,000 to $30,000.

Copies of the visual inspection reports have been requested from the state.

It's odd that those same pilings had already been installed, as was sod. I heard they forgot to install drainage, had recently removed those pilings, ruined the sod of course. They were in the process of "re-installing" the corrugated pilings when this happened.

The engineer on this project must have attended engineering school at the same college that the T-U's business manager attended business school. As we all know, the T-U business manager does not understand basic economics of the newspaper business. Newspapers depend on advertising dollars. Advertisers pay based upon the number of readers. Yet the T-U lowers its potential readership by blocking access to its website. Fewer readers equals less advertising revenue.

Moreover, the T-U prices its home delivery including digital access at $13,95 per month and its digital only delivery at $10.00 per month. This means paper-only is worth $3.95 per month. This pricing structure, again, reflects a gross misunderstanding of economics. In economic terms, fixed costs are the same regardless of whether you sell one or many, while variable costs increase in proportion to the number sold. Fixed costs for the T-U include reporters, buying content, page layout and, for the digital edition, a server and transferring the content to that server. Variable costs for the print edition include newsprint (paper), ink, folding, bundling, distribution, and delivery to homes. Variable costs for the digital edition are limited to bandwidth costs associated with higher demand, which are negligible on a per reader basis.

For a print edition of a newspaper, the variable costs are relatively high while the variable costs for a digital edition are very low. Yet, the T-U charges just $3.95 per month to add its print edition to its digital-only subscription, which is grossly over-priced at $10 per month. Logically and from a financial standpoint, this is backwards. The high variable cost of the print edition is demonstrated by the price of the print edition at newspaper boxes: $2 per day weekdays and $3 on Sundays, which equals $64 per month.